Open Stack

Mohammed Naser wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 6, 2020 at 10:53 AM Sean McGinnis <sean.mcginnis at gmx.com> wrote:
>> [...]
>> Cinder has been useful stand alone for several years now, but I have
>> also seen the reaction of "why would I use that, I don't need all of
>> that OpenStack stuff".
>>
>> I wonder if we need to do something better to highlight and message that
>> there are certain components of OpenStack that are useful as independent
>> components that can exist on their own.
> 
> I think that Sean here hit on the most critical point we need to
> drive.  There's no amount of splitting that would resolve this.

I think a large part of the problem lies in the way we communicate about 
OpenStack. In particular, it is difficult to find a webpage that talks 
about ironic as a software component you might want to use.

Practical exercise: find ironic on openstack.org. The best path involves 
two clicks and you only land on a component page[1] without much 
explanations. Or you reach https://www.openstack.org/bare-metal/ which 
is great, but more about the use case than the software. We are 
collectively to blame for this. The data on that component page is 
maintained by a repo[2] that I issued multiple calls for help for, and 
yet there aren't many changes proposed to expand the information 
presented there. And having a mix of a Foundation and a product website 
coexist at openstack.org means the information is buried so deeply 
someone born in this century would likely never find it.

I think we need to improve on that, but it takes time due to how search 
engines work. I may sound like a broken record, but the solution in my 
opinion is to have basic, component-specific websites for components 
that can be run standalone. Think ironic.io (except .io domains are 
horrible and it's already taken). A website that would solely be 
dedicated to presenting Ironic, and would only mention OpenStack in the 
fineprint, or as a possible integration. It would list Ironic releases 
outside of openstack cycle context, and display Ironic docs without the 
openstack branding.

That would go further to solve the issue than any governance change 
IMHO. Thoughts?

[1] https://www.openstack.org/software/releases/train/components/ironic
[2] https://opendev.org/osf/openstack-map/

-- 
Thierry Carrez (ttx)